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Indian Women's Glory night

It was absolutely electrifying at the D.Y. Patil stadium on 2 nd Nov when Harman ran back to catch Nadine De Klerk who was trying to clear the in-field after 3 dot balls against Deepti Sharma. It was a moment that the whole stadium had been anticipating since 2 overs, and when it came the spectators went berserk. India had won the World Cup. It did not matter that it was the women’s team and not the men’s team. The only thing that mattered was India are the new World Champions. The happiness was at par with what would have been if the men had lifted the trophy. This win carried forward the Indian dominance at ICC events post victorious campaigns at T20 World Cup 2024, Women’s U-19 T20 World Cup 2025, and Champions Trophy 2025. I am sure everyone watched or followed the match. I was one of the lucky few to witness history being created from the stadium itself hence I can share the energy I felt. The match started at 5 pm instead of the scheduled time of 3 pm due to rains. Initially I w...
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The Series is still Alive

After the heartbreak at Lords, it looked like another series loss was on the cards when Rahul and Gill walked off for lunch on the 4th afternoon. What followed was exemplary display of solitude, discipline and patience. Rahul, Gill, Jadeja and Sundar transformed themselves into walls and did not let the England bowlers to go through. Although not a win, but this draw was nothing short of a win, considering the situation the team was in. As we all saw, the match also had a very dramatic finish. Such has been the series that it deserves all the drama. Let's rewind and get through the match quickly. To start off, the luck is definitely not favouring India as Gill lost his 4th consecutive toss in as many matches. It was also the 14th consecutive coin toss lost for India in International Cricket. I genuinely feel India haven't got their selection right for most of the matches. In search of batting depth, bowling potency is being compromised. Irrespective of how well or poorly you ba...
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A Historic Achievement

In the week gone by, we have seen an absolutely fantastic fight back from the Indian team leading to a historic victory at Edgbaston, after a very long wait of 8 tests and 58 years. It was a near perfect game and this should form as a template going forward. Barring a couple players, all the others have numbers to show for their contributions. This is the kind of match that gets the team going and generates great amount of confidence. So let's get into it. Even the toss and the team selection was eventful and highly debated across platforms by everyone. India's team selection was debated throughout the first 2 days, while England's decision at the toss was under scrutiny in retrospect on the final day. Everyone believed that Bumrah should have played this match considering there was a break of 7 days between the 1st and 2nd match. A bowler of Bumrah's quality should always be in contention but I feel India had made their mind up about playing him at Lords. If he had pla...
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2nd Test beckons

It was a tale of a few hits and a lots of misses for the Indian team in the 1st Test at Headingley. If you had read my previous blog, most of my predictions and expectations have come true and unfortunately much of it wasn't favouring India. I expected Jaiswal, Rahul, Gill, Pant and Jadeja to do the bulk of the scoring but sadly they were literally the only ones scoring. In the 1st inning, only these 5 got into double digits. Out of the 835 runs scored by India in this match across innings, if you remove their scores, then the rest 6 have scored 59 runs. Just to stress, 6 batsman×2 innings=12 innings and just 59 runs. Which is less than 5 runs per batting instance. This is shameful to say the least. We saw two massive collapses and 4 players scoring centuries. Such lop sided batting performance can rarely give you a victory. And to aggravate the problems even further, India's fielding was shabby and sloppy. A total of eight catches were dropped along with all the misfields. Eig...
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Ind vs Eng Series Preview

The past few months had been captured by IPL followed by a string of mishaps in India as well as across the globe. Even the IPL had to pause owing to a War like situation between India and Pakistan. But a pause is the most that a sport like Cricket can afford. It paused, but in a weeks time it was up and running. So much that 10 days ago there were close to 12-14 different teams in England simultaneously to play cricket all at once! We had an excellent contest between bat and ball a week ago in the World Test Championship Final where South Africa emerged victorious. It was a final but it also served as a warm-up to the Test Cricket season which lies ahead of us. And now it's almost time for the 1st Test between England and India to begin. Maybe this is a bit late for a preview but nonetheless I have some views about this series which I would like to share with you all. Indian Test team is going through a transition and two big names have hung up their boots from the longest format....
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The Curious Case of RoKo

I had ended my last blog on the note that there are 2 pairs of legends whom I hadn’t touched and both these pairs deserved a separate blog. So here we are with 1 st of those blogs on the Batting legend pair. The past few months have been poor for Rohit Sharma as well as Virat Kohli in the longer format. Both had retired from T20Is after lifting the T20 World Cup in June 2024. With focus shifting to Tests and the World Test Championship, India should have had an easy entry into the final with 2 home series and one away series pending. But as fate would have it, in a dramatic turn of events, India was whitewashed at home by New Zealand. And with that India’s hopes of reaching the final were also quashed. From there on India needed something more than extra ordinary in Australia but with poor batting and bowling after the 1 st test, except Bumrah of-course, it was never going to happen. India’s batting failures as a group have been the primary cause for the losses at home and away as ...
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India's Batting Problems

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  After the successive series losses against NZ at home and in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy, I feel it is time to introspect into the constant failures of the Indian batting line up. It is not like one or two players have faltered but everyone has been guilty of complacency and an almost careless attitude. If we look at the ongoing WTC cycle, apart from the away series in WI in 2023 and the home series against England in 2024, the batting has been very poor. Series against SA and Bangladesh are not great to look at since they were low scoring encounters due to the pitch and the conditions. In the last 2 series though, out of the 15 completed innings, India has crossed the 200-run mark on only 6 occasions. Of which 300 was crossed thrice. The only exception has been Yashasvi Jaiswal. He was phenomenal in 2024 at home as well as away. Home performances might be slightly better than the away ones but those are equally important since everyone around him was finding it very difficult t...
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